Detroit's future is in the hands of two Jones Day partners

Bloomberg profiles two Jones Day attorneys — one based in Los Angeles, the other in Cleveland — who will play a big role in the future of Detroit.The Jones Day partners, Bruce Bennett, 54, and his colleague David Heiman, 68, are in charge of Detroit's day-to-day legal strategy, which for the next four months will focus on defending Gov. Rick Snyder's decision to file Detroit's $18 billion bankruptcy.“The two have been working out of the spotlight, which so far has been trained on the governor and Kevyn Orr, who was a partner at Jones Day when Snyder named him as Detroit's emergency manager in March,” Bloomberg reports.However, “the focus may shift to Bennett, Heiman and the rest of their legal team when they enter the federal courthouse in downtown Detroit (Monday), the date they have requested for an initial hearing,” the news service says. Mr. Heiman is the case manager, while Mr. Bennett will lead the litigation and debt-restructuring efforts.Mr. Bennett has experience in big municipal bankruptcy. Bloomberg says that when Orange County, Calif., filed what was then the biggest U.S. municipal bankruptcy, Mr. Bennett “developed a strategy that quickly returned cash to other government agencies that had money in the investment pool. … That decision helped prevent smaller agencies from following Orange County into bankruptcy.”Cleveland-based Mr. Heiman is a senior figure in U.S. bankruptcy circles, “a dean of the national bankruptcy bar,” says Derek Abbott, a lawyer at Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP in Wilmington, Del. “He's very polished.”Bloomberg notes that he has handled corporate restructurings, including the bankruptcies of Federated Department Stores and automaker Chrysler LLC of Auburn Hills, Mich.All his cases have prepared him for his latest job, Mr. Heiman says in an e-mail to Bloomberg.

“I do like Michigan, and Detroit, so maybe Chrysler helped in that respect,” he says. What really prepares is being on a great, cause-oriented team.”Mr. Heiman, who grew up in Cincinnati and got his law degree from the University of Cincinnati, founded Jones Day's bankruptcy division in 1984.Joe Farnan, a retired federal judge, tells Bloomberg that Mr. Bennett is one of the five best bankruptcy lawyers working today, with a gift for creative legal solutions — but he's not always the best man to sell those ideas to a reluctant client who may need soothing.“He's not fuzzy and warm,” Mr. Farnan says.

D.C. players

Forest City Washington, the D.C. arm of Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises Inc., is one of three contenders for a project to turn 67 acres of the former Walter Reed army hospital into a mixed-use neighborhood, according to this Washington Post story.“For all the ideas, visions and plans that three competing developers unveiled last week, more than anything, Mayor Vincent C. Gray will be picking a partner,” the paper notes.Forest City has big-ticket experience in D.C., having worked on The Yards in the city's Southeast district and Waterfront Station in the Southwest district.“Of everything on the competing companies' résumés, Forest City's 42-acre Yards project probably best resembles Walter Reed,” The Post says. “Through a partnership with the federal government, the company is turning former Navy industrial land into 2,800 housing units, 1.8 million square feet of office space and 400,000 square feet of retail, including a Harris Teeter grocery store.”The Yards is far from complete, “so adding Walter Reed would give the company two colossal projects to complete at once, but Forest City Enterprises has assets of $10.6 billion — a stockpile that should be big enough to serve them for the long haul,” according to the story.

One observer tells the newspaper, “They've got a really wide scope of geography that they cover but also a wide scope of programs that they cover — everything from office to retail to residential. That clearly fits with what the city is looking for at Walter Reed.”

Check out the craftsmanship

The Moreland Hills home of former KraftMaid Cabinetry owner Richard Moodie was The Wall Street Journal's”House of the Day” last Friday, and as you might expect from someone who worked in a housing-related business, it does not disappoint.The home will go to online auction starting on Saturday through Interluxe Auctions, a luxury auction company that uses an online bidding format similar to eBay's model, according to Scott Kirk, president of the company. The auction runs through Wednesday afternoon. The starting, and minimum, bid is $1.45 million.It could be a big opportunity for a bargain.The 5.7-acre property includes tennis and basketball courts, a fish-stocked pond and a 16-seat theater. The 10,000-square-foot home, completed in 1994, cost “just over $9 million” to build, not including furnishings, Mr. Moodie says. (He built it with his late wife.)Mr. Moodie calls the brick-and-cedar shingle house “transitional” in style — traditional in some regards, but open and airy like more contemporary homes, The Journal adds.The home includes seven bedrooms and six full bathrooms. The master bedroom suite measures 2,400 square feet and includes two walk-in closets and his and her bathrooms. The walls of the bedroom are padded and upholstered with silk for sound insulation and added privacy.The kitchen features a built-in TV over the cooking range, which Mr. Moodie says makes the room a great spot to drink his morning coffee and watch the news, according to The Journal.Mr. Moodie left KraftMaid in 2000 and now is semiretired, he says.You also can follow me on Twitter for more news about business and Northeast Ohio.

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